Club Book

Somali expat and debut author Abdi Nor Iftin is the pen behind one of the most anticipated – and most timely – nonfiction releases of 2018. Iftin’s long and harrowing journey to America, as part of the U.S. Government’s embattled Diversity Visa Program, came to the attention of audiences around the world through a viral BBC Radio mini-series. Iftin’s larger-than-life immigration story begins in wa...

Chart-topping mystery phenom Karin Slaughter is the author behind nearly twenty thrillers to date. Collectively, her books have sold a staggering 35 million copies across more than 120 countries. She is best known for the nine-book Grant County series, set in rural Georgia, which launched her writing career in 2001. It centers around small town pediatrician and part-time coroner Dr. Sara Linton an...

Patricia Hampl is one of those rare authors who holds perennial appeal with general audiences, but is also beloved by writers everywhere: “lyric, cerebral, and a boon companion at any stage of the writing journey” ( Ploughshares ). In her debut memoir and travelogue, A Romantic Education (1981), Hampl explores her Czech heritage. Her equally poignant follow-up, Virgin Time (1992), turns the spotli...

Samantha Irby is a comedienne and memoirist, and a decidedly unique voice in contemporary African American literature. Her fresh, honest brand of humor first came to the attention of readers through her immensely popular blog Bitches Gotta Eat . Irby’s bestselling essay collection, Meaty (2013), adapts and expands her most popular blog entries – and adds some new ones, to boot. Topics truly run th...

Emily Fridlund’s opus History of Wolves straddles the line between thriller and coming-of-age novel. Fridlund’s teenage protagonist, Linda, is an outsider in her close-knit Northwoods community. She finally finds a sense of belonging babysitting for the eccentric Gardner family, but the role comes with expectations and secrets she is ill equipped to handle. History of Wolves shortlisted Fridlund f...

Ariel Lawhon is a rising star in the realm of historical fiction. Her first forays into the popular genre include The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (2014), which explores one of the most mysterious missing persons cases of the twentieth century as told from the perspectives of the three women who knew the victim best. The New York Times Book Review praised Lawhon’s woven narrative as “more meti...

Laura Lippman is author of the chart-topping Tess Monaghan series. Plucky, resourceful Baltimore private eye Tess Monaghan is a consistent New York Times bestseller, and the dozen installments so far have garnered Lippman an international following. She has also published ten standalone books, including the acclaimed Every Secret Thing (2004) and After I’m Gone (2014), and an intertwined anthology...

Minnesota boasts more than its share of homegrown mystery novelists, and William Kent Krueger ranks near the top of that list for many. He is best known for his sixteen-book Cork O’Connor series, set in the state’s forested and isolated Arrowhead Region. O’Connor, a cop turned sheriff and private investigator, burst onto the scene in Iron Lake (1998). This debut won Krueger a rare honor: both the...

Edward Kelsey Moore is the pen behind 2014’s breakout hit The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat . Moore’s debut follows three life-long friends – dubbed “The Supremes” while in high school – as they navigate four decades of life’s challenges. It garnered Moore a Best First Novel Award from the American Library Association – Black Caucus, among other high honors. The Supremes also boasted an impre...

Lawyer-turned-novelist Allen Eskens burst onto the thrillers scene in 2014 with his “compulsively suspenseful” ( Bookpage ) mystery The Life We Bury . This literary debut won the former defense attorney the genre’s prestigious Barry Award, the Rosebud Award for Best First Novel – and put him in contention for an Edgar Award, an Anthony Award, and half a dozen others. The Life We Bury has since bee...

Acclaimed writer and prison reform advocate Heather Ann Thompson, PhD, is the winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History. Thompson won that high honor for Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Rebellion of 1971 and its Legacy – the first definitive account of our country’s largest and most notorious prison rebellion. In addition to the Pulitzer, the 2016 title also garnered Dr. Thompson the Ban...

Shawn Lawrence Otto is a science activist and two-time Minnesota Book Award winner. His nonfiction debut, Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America (2012), is a meticulously researched exposé on the growing anti-science movement – a book that “every voter in the country should read it,” according to MinnPost . Otto’s provocative 2016 follow-up, The War on Science: Who’s Waging It,...

Minnesota boasts its fair share of thriller novelists, but few are as prolific as David Housewright. Intrepid ex-cop Holland Taylor, Housewright’s original protagonist, first came to the attention of readers in his 1995 debut, Penance . It earned the author the 1996 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and put him in contention for that year’s Shamus Award (bestowed by the Private Eye Writers of Ameri...

Dave Page is one of the foremost scholars writing today on the life and legacy of Saint Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald. Among other credits, Page edited The Thoughtbook of F. Scott Fitzgerald , the future literary star’s boyhood journal. (Fitzgerald mined Minnesota characters and episodes from his ‘Thoughtbook’ when crafting a backdrop for his seminal The Great Gatsby , and in other stories.) Pag...

Scandinavian readers who have never visited the United States have come to know northern Minnesota intimately through the inspired work of Norwegian crime novelist Vidar Sundstøl. He is best known, both in his native country and abroad, for the Minnesota Trilogy: The Land of Dreams , Only the Dead , and The Ravens . The series, translated to English by Tiina Nunnally, centers around a U.S. Forest...

Nigerian-American short fiction favorite Lesley Nneka Arimah made waves in April with the release of her long-awaited collection What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky . For months prior, publications as varied as Time , Elle , The Chicago Tribune , The Boston Globe , and even Buzzfeed had lauded it as one of 2017’s most anticipated releases – and with good reason. Arimah’s debut features a d...

Only a handful of romance writers can boast a career as long or prolific as Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Over the past three decades, she has published nearly thirty books. Moreover, that corpus including five novels singled out as Favorite Book of the Year by the Romance Writers of America (RWA) – a distinction achieved by no other author to date. RWA inducted Phillips into its Romance Writers Hall...

P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo Patricia (P.J.) and Traci Lambrecht, authors behind the internationally bestselling Monkeewrench mystery series. Set right here in the Twin Cities, the Monkeewrench novels center around a group of computer geniuses who split their time between software engineering and a much less prosaic pastime: helping authorities solve Minnesota’s seemi...

Ghanaian-American novelist Yaa Gyasi is the author behind Homegoing , one of the breakout hits of 2016. This sweeping, transcontinental family saga follows the descendants of two sisters torn apart by the African slave trade. The legacy of slavery follows six subsequent generations – through the American Civil War, to twentieth-century Harlem, and up to the modern day. It has earned a wide range o...

Minnesota’s own Lorna Landvik is a comedienne, actress, playwright, and prolific novelist. Her 1995 fiction debut, Patty Jane’s House of Curl – a zany but heartwarming story about two Minnesota sisters who open a beauty parlor… complete with live harp music and Norwegian baked goods – introduced readers to Landvik’s unique brand of humor. She has since published nearly a dozen other books, includi...

Julie Rivett is a scholar and granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett, author of the 1929 detective classic The Maltese Falcon . Hammett is considered the father of the “hard-boiled” style of detective writing, and The Maltese Falcon is undoubtedly his opus. Julie Rivett has edited five books on her celebrated grandfather’s work, including: Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett (2001), Dashiell Hammett:...

Award-winning novelist Lily King is the author of Euphoria , one of 2014’s best reviewed books. King’s popular page-turner is inspired by and loosely based around the New Guinea fieldwork of famed cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. The New York Times Book Review singled out Euphoria for a coveted spot on its annual “10 Best Books” list, praising King’s work as a “meticulously researched homage...

Pam Jenoff is the author behind The Kommandant’s Girl (2007), one of this past decade’s best received works of historical romance. After the Nazis occupy Poland in 1939, young Jewish bride Emma Bau is forced to flee her home and husband and assume a new identity. In hopes of gaining intel for the Polish resistance movement, she becomes the secretary and love interest of a high-ranking German offic...

Book club favorite Jamie Ford made waves in 2009 with the publication of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet . Set in Seattle against the backdrop of Japanese-American internment during World War II, Ford’s historical fiction debut follows the unlikely but lasting friendship between a Chinese-American boy and Japanese-American girl. Kirkus Reviews commended it “a timely tale that not only remi...

Richard Zacks is an accomplished journalist and historian, best known by many for his gripping, well-researched books on topics relating to the Golden Age of Piracy. These include The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd (2002), billed as a “rare, authentic pirate story for grown-ups,” and The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 (2005) – a bes...